Shared Instrumentation Facility

The major scientific instruments at HPU are housed under the auspices of the Shared Instrumentation Facility (SIF), which is a core facility funded by the National Institutes of Health INBRE grant. The SIF was initiated in 2005 to provide laboratory resources for biomedical and other multidisciplinary research and to support instructional curriculum. Today the SIF includes instrumentation and laboratory space on the Hawaii Loa campus, including a cell biology research lab (102A AC), a chemistry research lab (102D AC), and a departmental shared laboratory (214 AC).

A principal strategy of the SIF has been to procure and support state-of-the-art instrumentation to support research at HPU while integrating the instruments into the science curriculum to provide direct hands-on experience in the instructional laboratory courses. As a result, the SIF represents an excellent example of synergy between extramural funded research and academics that has resulted in the development of research enterprise as well as our students’ educational outcomes. The SIF brings together an essential collection of labs, equipment, staff, and other research resources. The overarching goal of the SIF is to provide outstanding instrumentation and laboratory facilities to support chemical, biological, biomedical, and marine science research -- leading to peer-reviewed publications, funded grant proposals, quality training for future scientists -- and to support extraordinary educational activities for HPU students. The facility seeks to provide uninterrupted access to and training on the instruments, while promoting a safe working environment through safety training and best practices. The research that the SIF supports includes natural products chemistry, organic synthesis, high through put ion channel bioassays, toxicological analyses, cell biology, electrophysiology, and more.

Funding for the SIF comes from the National Institutes of Health IDeA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) grant (click for more information), which is intended to expand and develop Hawaii's competitive biomedical research capacity.

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